This article originally appeared in the September 2012 issue of Architectural Digest.

On the whole, the grand old houses of New Orleans tend to be stuffed with antiques and festooned with the dangling crystal prisms of Victorian chandeliers. Locals have powerful ties to their familial pasts, and their devotion to the city’s history is as fervent as ever—heirlooms and Oriental rugs remain far more plentiful in the Big Easy than contemporary art and midcentury chairs. That’s not the case, however, in a certain circa-1829 home in the Faubourg Marigny area. While its crumbling pink stucco façade has a romantic patina, the mood inside is startlingly mod, with a black-and-white palette highlighting the building’s flawless Greek Revival bone structure.

This spic-and-span aesthetic makes perfect sense for owner Sidney D. Torres IV. A dashing real-estate developer and venture capitalist who grew up in nearby St. Bernard Parish, he founded and directs the four-property French Quarter Hotel Group. (His latest undertaking is the Cove Eleuthera, a resort in the Bahamas that reopens next month after a major renovation.) But it was his trash-collecting and street-cleaning operation, SDT Waste & Debris Services, launched shortly after Hurricane Katrina, that made him a hometown celebrity. The firm’s black-and-silver trucks, matching uniforms, and fun, glam TV commercials starring Torres’s friends Kid Rock and Lenny Kravitz captured the city’s attention— and the entrepreneur’s high-profile service to the community earned him a clutch of civic awards.

Torres sold the business about a year ago, in a deal he put together in his dining room, at a sleek custom-made table topped with polished black granite. “I use it as often for business meetings as I do for meals,” he says of the lofty space, which is animated by a giant keyhole-shaped mirror in the surrealist manner of midcentury French designer Serge Roche.

That glittering mirror was one of the many treasures hunted down by Lee Ledbetter, the New Orleans architect and interior designer who renovated the faded landmark. Like Robert A.M. Stern, for whom he once worked, he is both talented and scholarly. But Ledbetter’s projects—Torres’s hip hotels among them—most often take a modernist turn, even when, as in this case, the building is historic. In fact, the three-story dwelling was previously one of his client’s hotels, the Rivers Inn. After the hurricane some of Torres’s properties were struggling for survival, so he turned the place into his personal residence.

Ledbetter expanded many of the three-foot-wide doorways between rooms to 12 feet. “I’ve renovated four large French Quarter houses, and I’ve done this in every one,” the architect says. “It helps open up the spaces, create flow, increase views, and bring in light. But I also respect what’s there.” For instance, existing moldings were expertly replicated to preserve the rooms’ historic integrity. Torres was involved in every design decision, from choosing appliances for the streamlined kitchen to picking out marble for the five luxurious baths. “I had to run all the whites by him,” Ledbetter says with a grin.

Ledbetter designed the sofa, covered in a Larsen silk velvet; the Hervé Van der Straeten bronze ceiling lanterns are from Maison Gerard, the mirrors are by Jonathan Burden, the goat-pelt bench is from Downtown, and Pamela Sunday’s gold Electrum sculpture was found at Van den Akker Antiques. The curtains are made of a J. Robert Scott silk, with sheers of a Holly Hunt linen, and the rugs are by Tai Ping.

Classic 20th-century furnishings—never the obvious ones, more Osvaldo Borsani than Charles and Ray Eames—define the interiors, along with a scattering of antiques. The architect also mixed in contemporary art, namely striking modern works by admired Louisiana artist George Dunbar, a client and longtime friend. Every sofa is a Ledbetter creation, including the living room’s 13-foot sectional, which he covered in a silk velvet whose color wavers intriguingly between gunmetal and bronze.

The introduction of that elusive shade took a bit of lobbying, since Torres will countenance only black and white. “I like the way that combination defines architecture,” the hotelier says. “This place is all about high ceilings, thick crown moldings, and wide-board pine floors.” Nonetheless, Ledbetter smuggled in shades of brown, bronze, and gray and glints of gold to relieve the severity of the palette. For the floors, a stain was custom mixed—70 percent ebony, 30 percent coffee-brown—and topped off with three coats of high-gloss polyurethane for a patent-leather luster. “Near-black is much more interesting than jet-black,” the architect insists. “It’s got so much more depth.”

Ledbetter decorated the three-room master suite, a space flooded with sunlight from triple-hung windows, all in white with ethereal gold accents. Was he trying to dial up some serious Hollywood glamour, maybe making a reference to Jean Harlow’s snowy bedroom in the movie Dinner at Eight? Not intentionally, Ledbetter says; the all-white scheme was chosen mainly because it makes the room feel “up in the clouds.” That heavenly sensation is underscored by vast white shag rugs “so thick you want to roll around on them,” says Torres’s fiancée, Jennifer Savoie, who met him after the house was finished.

The two hit it off the moment they were introduced—by Torres’s mother, no less, who bumped into the young woman at a hair salon. Now the couple is working together on the Bahamas resort project. “It will be white, white, white,” Savoie says. “We’ll bring color in through pillows and art, but no black.” And once that job is done, there’s one more improvement left to make at the house in New Orleans: Ledbetter says he will be building the future Mrs. Torres one fantastic closet.

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